God says in His Word that one day we’ll stand before Him and all things will be revealed. I can’t imagine looking on the face of Jesus. I can’t imagine knowing and understanding fully, how much He loves us.

An Intimate Knowledge

It’s always something special for me, heading into that time of the year that we call Easter. This is my eleventh Easter since I became a Christian and it just never ceases to amaze me what the Easter story is all about. You know, as we think about Easter over the coming few weeks, it’s a good time for us to think about what God was up to. I mean Christmas seems like it was just a few weeks away but, hey, you know, that’s when we celebrate the birth of Jesus – the whole ‘baby in the manger’ thing – Jesus becoming a man. But Easter for Jesus didn’t happen just a few months after Christmas. Easter for Jesus happened about thirty three years later during the Passover celebration. It was the time when Israel celebrated the freedom that they had out of slavery. They’d been slaves in Egypt for a few centuries and God sent Moses to tell Pharaoh to let His people go and God sent a whole bunch of plagues on Egypt, and the last plague; the most powerful plague, was the first born of every Egyptian family – in fact their animals as well – were killed by God and that ultimately convinced Pharaoh to let His people go. But it didn’t happen to the Israelites, you see, they were slaves in Egypt and God said to them: “Look, you get a lamb and you slay that lamb and you put that lamb’s blood on the top of your door frame and the angel of death will pass over your house and this plague won’t befall your house.” And so the Passover celebration was the celebration of the freedom that Israel received from slavery, through the shedding of the blood of a lamb and that, of course, is what Easter is all about.

So here Jesus was in His early thirties and it was the Passover celebration and it’s the time that we remember that Jesus, not only came to earth as a man; He not only walked through every trial and temptation that you and I do; He not only healed the sick and cast out demons and preached with power; He laid His life on the line for you and me. He died for us. Now we will look at the how and why of that over the next few weeks but for me, Easter, Easter begins long, long before that. You look at God and you say: “Well, why did you, God go to such an extreme? What was it all about that you sent your Son, your only Son, Jesus, your beloved and you let Him be spat on and be beaten and be crucified?

Today we are starting a new series on Christianityworks called, “You are “To Die For”. Now the term ‘to die for’ is a contemporary term – if you’re not aware, it’s SMS shorthand, you know the kids as they send SMS messages to one another, often put the word ’to die for’. They don’t write it out, they write the number two, the letters ’di’ and the number four (2di4) and it’s shorthand for something that you just have to have. A girl might send an SMS to a girlfriend of hers and talk about a boy and say he was 2di4. A boy might look at a car or a motorbike and say, that car or motorbike is 2di4. Something that’s ’to die for’ is something that you just have to have. And so that’s why we are doing a series called, “You Are “To Die For”, because that’s what Easter is all about. And this term ‘to die for’ started me thinking, God was prepared to send His Son ‘to die for’ you and me. You and I, in His eyes, in His heart, we are ’to die for.’

There’s a beautiful Psalm – you may have heard me talk about this Psalm before – we are going to spend today looking at this Psalm. If you have a Bible, grab it, open it up at Psalm 139, because Psalm 139 is a Psalm that, I guess lays the foundations of Easter for me. It lays the foundations of ‘to die for’. We are going to unpack this whole idea and go and have a look at what was going on inside the Father’s great and mighty heart. What was He thinking about? How was He thinking about you and me when He hatched Easter? Easter is a hard thing to get our hearts around; it’s a hard thing to get out minds around, but Psalm 139 is a great place to start. Psalm 139 tells us what was in God’s heart; what drove God towards this amazing plan that we now call Easter. Let’s have a read. Grab a Bible; open it up – Psalm 139. We’ll just look at verses 1 to 12 to begin with. This is what it says:

“Oh Lord, you have searched me and you have known me. You know when I sit down; you know when I rise up. You perceive my thoughts from far, far away. You discern my going out and my lying down; you’re familiar with all of my ways. Before even a word is on my tongue, you know it completely, Lord. You hem me in, behind me, in front of me; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is just too wonderful for me. It’s too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your face? If I go to the heavens, you’re there – if I make my bed in the depths of hell you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the farthest side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me – your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light will become night around me, even the darkness isn’t dark to you. The night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”

This is a beautiful Psalm; this is not just words. This is a man who wrote this Psalm, pouring his heart out about how wonderful God is. And the three things that jump out at me in this short passage; this first few verses of Psalm 139, are firstly, how intimately God knows us – “Lord you have searched me, you know me. You know when I sit down, when I get up, when I go out, when I lie down. You know what I’m thinking – even before I say a word, you know what words are going to be on my lips. Lord, you know me.” God know us intimately.

Now sometimes Easter feels a little bit like a retailing phenomenon. You know, ‘go and buy the chocolate eggs and let’s have a long weekend and a rest. And if God is a busy God and He doesn’t have time for us, then He doesn’t know us.’ But that isn’t who God is! God knows you and He knows me. Everything we are thinking; everything we are doing; everything we are hoping for; everything we are hurting for – God knows us. And secondly, He’s on that journey with us. “You hem me in, you’re behind me, you’re in front of me; you’ve laid your hand upon me.” It’s interesting you know – when this was written, all the other gods that all the other nations worshipped, lived in static places – they lived on hilltops, they lived in temples and people went to them and worshipped them but this God, whom the psalmist is writing to, this God spent forty years on a journey in the wilderness with His people Israel. You can read about it in the Book of Exodus.

God is a God who is on the journey with us, even, even in heaven, even in hell, even if we go to the farthest part of the world, even there God is there. His presence, His face – literally the Hebrew word means ‘His face’ is there. And even when it feels dark, “surely the darkness will hide me and the light will become night around me, but even in the darkness it will be not dark to you. The night will shine like the day for the darkness is as light to you.” God is in those dark places and this is not some distant god, this is not some unmoved movie, you know someone who does not feel for us. This is a God who knows us wonderfully and beautifully and intimately.

It’s hard for us to fathom. There are billions of people who have lived down through the ages and He knows each one of us more and more intimately than we can imagine. That’s what God is like. He knows each one of us like that and that for me sets the scene for Easter.

He Was There

We are taking a look today at what was going on in God’s heart, what was He thinking when He was dreaming up this whole Easter thing? It’s an amazing plan – God sends His Son to earth to be beaten and spat upon and crucified and die on a cross at the hands of men. Psalm 139, which is the Psalm that we are looking at today, kind of tells us about His motivations behind Easter – doesn’t talk about Easter specifically, but it tells us what God’s heart is for us. And we just had a look at the first part, to show us that God knows so intimately – He’s on every step of the journey with us and that’s huge, to know that God is walking every step of the way with us – nowhere where we can go and be alone or apart, in heaven or in hell. But how is it that He knows us this well? I mean, sometimes we don’t even know ourselves, do we? We can’t explain why we do what we do or we react to something the way we react. You and I, we’re pretty complex creatures; there’s so many layers to who we are. Some things are so deep inside us we can’t really ever understand them or even talk about them ourselves, so how does God know?

Well, the writer of this Psalm goes on to explain that. We are looking at Psalm 139, verses 13 to 16, if you have a Bible. It says this: “For God, you created my innermost being. You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made, your works are wonderful, I know that so well. My frame wasn’t hidden from you when I was made in a secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth; your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days were ordained for me, they were written in your book even before one of them came to be.” This is one of the most precious passages in the Bible to me. As I look back on my life – and you do to – there’s a mixture of wonderful and desperate, beautiful and ugly. We’ve both done some brilliant things and we’ve done some really stupid things. There are great highs and there are dark valleys, but when you and I were conceived, God was there. My innermost parts; who I am – your innermost parts; who you are, our DNA blueprint – the way that we look and sound and all our gifts and abilities and strengths and weaknesses – all that, those layers of complexity – He created your innermost being. He knit you together in your mother’s womb.

Imagine you and I have been hand-crafted by God – distinctive – one of a kind – completely, utterly, amazingly, beautifully, wondrously made – separated and different from any other person who’s ever lived or any other person who will ever live, intricately woven each strand of DNA, laid down according to His plan. Not only that; not only who we are but everything that would ever happen to us. Look at it again: “All the days were ordained for me; they were written in your book before one of them came to be.” I so despair when I meet people who waste away their lives worrying and complaining about their lot. Yes, some people have better lives than others – some people seem to get all the breaks and the benefits and the blessings – other people seem to get handed difficult lives; painful lives; a bit like Jesus, people like the Apostle Paul, but it’s all a part of God’s plan.

There’s a beautiful poem – you might have heard me read it once before – it’s called “The Weaver” and it goes like this:

My life is but a weaving between my Lord and me.
I cannot choose the colours as He weaveth steadily,
Sometimes He chooses dark threads and I in foolish pride
Forget He sees the upper and I the underside.
Not till the loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly
Shall God unroll the canvas and explain the reasons why
The dark threads were as needful in the weaver’s skilful hand
As the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He hath planned.”

You and I are what He made us to be. We are living the lives He planned for us. Nothing is a surprise to Him and when we put our faith in Him we experience the most incredible joy.

I was having lunch recently with a woman who is well into her seventies now, whose husband, quite a few years back, committed suicide. How devastating must that have been? But she put her faith in Christ – she spent time in God’s Word and she has a quiet joy and a beautiful countenance about her. She could have lived the rest of her life bitter but no, she has lived it in Christ. And when we see the beauty of God’s plan, handcrafted as we are by Him, to live the life that He laid out before time began, we get some sense of what was going on in His heart when He came up for this plan for Easter, because we can only live the life that He has planned, if we live it with Him. We have a basic problem, that problem is called ’sin’. It’s the things that we have done wrong that keep us away from Him and that’s what Easter’s about. We are going to look at that as we conclude the program.

That’s Huge….

As we head towards Easter in these coming weeks, one of the things that I hope we’ll ponder is the reaction of the writer, the Psalmist, the person who wrote Psalm 139 that we have been looking at today. There’s a sense of awe and wonder as he ponders how intimately God knows him. How faithfully God hangs in there with him and the wonder of God’s craftsmanship and plan. Look again at what the Psalmist writes in verse 6: “Such knowledge is too high for me – it is so high I can’t attain it.” Verse 14: “I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, O God, that I know very well.” And again in verse 17: “How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God, how vast is the sum of them, I try to count them but they are more than the sand on the beach. I come to the end and thought, ‘I’m still with you.”

Easter is the time when God sent His Son to die for us to solve this basic problem that we have; a problem that God calls ‘sin’ and I know, sin used to sound like such an old fashioned word to me too, but it is ‘the’ problem of humanity. And we will look at that next week on the program. But the thing that just, I don’t know, oozes out of this Psalm, that speaks so much about God’s motivation behind Easter, is His incredible love. We will never, ever, ever be able to wrap our minds around that. We will never, ever be able to understand how He feels about us. You know God says in His Word that one day we will stand before Him and all things will be revealed.

I can’t imagine – I just can’t imagine looking on God. I can’t imagine looking on the face of Jesus. I can’t imagine knowing and understanding fully how much He loves us and when He created you, when He created me, individually and wondrously and perfectly hand-crafted you and me – intricately woven together in our mothers’ womb – that was the most amazing act of grace because He knew that we would reject Him. He always knew that – He always knew that to bring us back to Him, to save us from ourselves, to save us from what we deserved, which is an eternity without Him, He’d have to send Jesus to die on that cross for you and me.

No ifs, no buts, no maybes! You and I, our sin, our rebellion are no surprise to Him. He always knew and He still created us. He still allowed us to be born. He still planned every day of our lives even before any of those days existed at all. No wonder the Psalmist writes: “How weighty are your thoughts to me O God? How vast is the sum of them? I try and count them but they are more than the grains of sand on the beach,” because behind Easter is this amazing act of grace, not just that Jesus came to suffer and die for our failure but that God always knew that He would have to do that and He created us anyway.

Can I encourage you – never, ever to put Easter in some convenient, measured little box, never, ever to consign Easter to some head-knowledge thing, but like the Psalmist, be blown away by God’s love. Every breath you take, every step, every hilltop, every valley, every twist and turn, everything that we have to suffer and bear, live it in this awe and wonder at who God is and how much He loves us. Life takes on a completely new vibrancy and colour. Doesn’t matter how much we have to suffer, how much we have to weep, how many tears we cry, we know that God has a plan – He always has and God was there when you were hand-crafted by Him in your mother’s womb.

God always had a plan for you to be who you are, for you to live the life that He has given to you and for you to have life through the sacrifice of His Son, and for you and me to walk in the wonder and the awe of the completely unattainable knowledge of His love for us in Jesus Christ. We will look more at how that love plays itself out on the cross over the next few weeks but unless we are completely lost in the wonder of His plan and His love, Easter becomes just another long weekend.

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made, your works are so wonderful, that I know full well. My frame wasn’t hidden from you when I was in that secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes, God, saw my unformed body. All the days were ordained for me; they were written in your book before one of them as yet came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God, how vast is the sum of them. Were I to count them they would outnumber all of the grains of sand. When I awake I am still with you.” You and I are to die for in God’s sight. God wants an eternal relationship with you and me so much, that He sent His Son, very deliberately, to die on that cross for you and me.

What that was all about – why He had to do that, we will talk about next week on the program. But God sacrificed His Son so that you and I could have an eternal relationship with Him. We are quite literally ’to die for’. As much as we look in the mirror and see wrinkles and warts and we see all the bad things, God knows those – that is why He sent Jesus to die on the cross for us and that – my friend – that is what Easter is all about.

Jesus died for the one; Jesus died for you; He died for me, to set us free from the slavery of sin – the slavery of living a life that completely misses the point.

Sin by Another Name

This week we’re heading into Easter and it’s the second message in our Easter series called, “You are “To Die For”. Question: What makes Easter? Well, Easter, why did God do it? Why did God send His Son to die for you and me? Last week we saw that you and I are so incredibly precious to God. The Psalmist back in Psalm 8, asks this question, he says: “I look up at your huge skies dark and enormous, your hand made sky jewelry – moon and stars mounted in their settings, then I look at little old me and I wonder: “Why do you bother with us – why do you take a second look our way God?” It’s a good question and the answer is that we are so incredibly precious to God and the more precious something or someone is the more we would do for that something or someone.

Sadly in our world today, people pick the wrong things and make them precious – people pick wealth or they pick fame or they pick career or they pick status – always these external things and they end up sacrificing their lives to them, for no avail. But you and I are different; you and I are precious in God’s sight, in God’s heart and Easter is about Jesus on the cross; Easter is about the most incredible sacrifice – the Son of God crucified, punished on our behalf.

We’re going to look at that very thing next week on the program, but He was punished for you and for me and for a long time I wondered, “Why?” I mean, why did God go to those lengths? Look at me; look at you – we’re not that bad. Ok, we’re not perfect, at least I’m not, but isn’t this whole ‘Easter, cross, crucifixion thing‘, just a bit extreme? Christians talk a lot about ‘sin’ – now for most of my life I thought of ‘sin’ as being this really old fashioned, stuffy, church concept. I mean ‘sin‘? These days? Really? I mean its old fashioned, moralizing and guilt trips – it belongs to a view of religion of the past that’s not relevant today – people are writing books about it.

A well know scientist by the name of Steven Dawkins, recently wrote a book called, ‘The God Delusion’, and someone who was writing that book up said this, “The God Delusion makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong but potentially deadly”. And part of that is this notion that we have in the world today that sin is some man-made religious concept. We live in a society that denies sin, whatever that may mean to you. Right; wrong? Well they’re fluid concepts; they’re circumstantial; it depends on what works for you. But the word ‘sin’ – which I, for so many years thought was this stuffy, outdated concept – the word ‘sin’ in the Bible, literally meant ‘to miss the mark’. Today we would say ‘missing the point of life’ and because of the society we live in, the society that puts ‘me’ at the centre of my world, it puts ‘you’ at the centre of your world, and we do whatever feels good to make us better and have more fun and more comfort. Ok there’s some social responsibility, but by and large, we live in a selfish world. And in that society we kind of don’t notice somehow that sin’s going on – we notice the shotgun murders and that sort of thing, but in our lives, day by day, people deny the concept of sin.

There’s a wonderful parable called, ‘the boiling frog syndrome’ – you’ve probably heard of it. The notion if you have some boiling water and put a frog in it, the frog will jump straight out because it notices that the water is hot, but if you begin with cold water and you gradually, gradually gently heat that water, the frog ultimately will die because he doesn‘t notice that the water is getting hot and it kills him. Global warming has been a bit like that. I mean, we have been denying it for years, governments and big business have been denying it because it’s politically and economically expedient to keep pumping green-house gases into the atmosphere, slowly cooking the earth. It’s been obvious, but we’ve denied it.

I recently went to see Al Gore’s movie, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. It’s about climate change – whatever your politics; whatever your view of matters green, it’s absolutely a ‘must see’. He makes the point that the number of category four and five hurricanes has almost doubled in the past thirty years. The flow of ice from glaciers in Greenland has more than doubled in the past decade. Malaria has spread to higher altitudes because of warming – in places like the Columbian Andes, seven thousand feet above sea-level and at lease two hundred and seventy nine species of plants and animals are already responding to global warming by moving closer to the poles.

It paints a picture of a world out of control – it is so bent on consuming that we are prepared to destroy the planet. When you look at the facts it’s pretty obvious. The whole consumer treadmill; the economy based on greed; the boiling frog syndrome; just denies that reality. We behave as though it doesn’t exist. We do that with a lot of things. In the west, where people are wealthy by global standards, we ignore poverty; we ignore the wars and the starvation and the thousands of children every day that die of poverty. We just behave as though they don’t exist – they still do, but we just ignore them.

The point of sin is that it’s a bit like that ‘boiling frog’ syndrome, it’s deceptive. Through our selfishness, we kind of rationalize; we deny the reality. We stick out heads in the sand and pretend, ‘well, it’s not my problem – I’m not the one who is getting things wrong.

The Apostle Paul, in Romans chapter 7 verse 11, writes this. He says, “For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me and through the commandment put me to death.” You see, ’sin’ is deceptive. In Second Timothy chapter 3 verse 13, he writes this. “Evil men and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. And Psalm 36 verse 2 says, “For his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin,” and that’s right on the money. We kid ourselves; we try and behave as though sin doesn’t exist.

Just stop and think about the last twenty four hours and say, ‘well, what did do to hurt someone? What did I do to step on someone, what did I do to ignore someone? What did I do that ruined their lives and my life? Come on, we are masters of self-delusion. It doesn’t matter how much we deny it, when we look around the world; around society; around our own lives, sin is alive and well. Missing the point of life is alive and well and people are slaves to it – like lemmings over the cliff and the price, the price is being robbed of life itself. It’s walking around like a living dead, but “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that who ever believes in Him wouldn’t perish but have eternal life.” That; that is what Easter is all about!

Simply No Excuse

Have you ever been pulled over by a policeman for speeding? ‘Driver, do you know why you have been pulled over? Do you realize that you were exceeding the speed limit by whatever it is?’ I have, it’s a horrible feeling and you know there is simply no excuse – speed kills – it’s as simple as that. Imagine speeding and killing a child coming out of a school, or someone you love or an elderly person crossing the road? Measured against the consequences, speeding is crazy; it’s ludicrous; there’s just no way that you can justify it or you can excuse it. The consequence of speeding is death, yet most drivers speed every day. That attitude ’I’ve got to get there, I’ve just got to get there. I’ll save thirty seconds, I’ll save one minute, I’ll save two minutes off my journey’.

That attitude completely misses the point, doesn’t it? And that’s such a good example of sin. Sin is missing the point. Come on, look at our lives; look at the stuff that we want to descend into – being selfish, being greedy, just lying a little bit, bit of deception, pompous egos, treading on people, crushing them and then, do you know what we do? We rationalize it; we justify it; we say it’s everybody else’s fault – they don’t measure up to my mark or they did wrong to me; or that person hurt me and that’s why I had a go at them. Come on, it misses the point and in God’s eyes there is simply no excuse.

We began the program today with the words of the Psalmist in Psalm 8: “Looking up at the heavens and the stars and wondering, God, who am I that you should even give me a second thought?” The Apostle Paul takes that one step further in Romans chapter 1 and verse 20, he writes this, “For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities – His eternal power, His divine nature – they’ve been clearly seen, being understood from what’s been made so that we are without excuse.” In other words you look around and you can’t help but come to the conclusion that God is God. And it’s like speeding – when we deny God, when we turn away from Him, when we say, “No, no, no, I’m going to live my own life,’ there’s no excuse. It’s blindingly, glimpsingly obvious!

Look around, the fact that God created it all is so obvious – God’s majesty and His love and His wonder shine out through all the things He’s made. There is no excuse! I said before we are masters of delusion and we are. Somehow, for years I rationalised it. In my heart of hearts I knew that God was God, I knew that Jesus was the Son of God but we get used to the fact that our lives are missing the point – we get used to the fact that we are off doing stuff and ignoring God and then we try even harder to have a life of meaning. We work harder to earn more money or more recognition or to get a better career or … even though in our heart of hearts, we know it’s never, ever going to hit the mark. It’s like we become slaves to it, we become addicted to this sin, this treadmill and we are compelled to keep going in the same direction.

Put yourself in God’s shoes for a moment – He creates you and me out of love, in His own image and He gives us in this universe, on this earth that He has made for us, He gives us the freedom to accept or reject Him and that freedom comes from His love too. And He watches you and me take our freedom and reject Him and miss the whole point of creation and then suffer the consequences. And we do suffer – missing the point of life brings suffering. Sin has its consequences – loneliness, pain, doubt, isolation, lost-ness, hurts, no real sense of identity. We get to a point where we have completely lost sight of the fact that we’ve been created in God’s image; to delight in Him. And let me tell you, when God sees us in that state, His heart aches for us.

I was reading, just in my personal time with God this morning, in the Book of Judges, where Israel had rejected God so many times and they came to God because God had sent punishment. They’d been defeated and the Amorites were fighting against them and God said, “No, forget it. You people have rejected me so many times – go worship your gods and your idols – go suffer the consequences.” Then God looked down upon His people and He saw them suffering and the Bible says, He just couldn’t help Himself, He had to go and help them. And that’s what God is like. He loves us and wants to bless us and when He see us suffering the consequences of our sin He can’t help Himself; His heart aches for us and that’s why, just at the right time, when you and I were still powerless to deal with any of that; when we were still busy rejecting God, Jesus Christ died for the ungodly. He dragged that cross to Calvary and allowed Himself to be nailed to it. He took the burdens, the consequences, the pains of our sin upon Himself, once and for all. He paid the price and greater love has no man than to lay down His live for His friends and who ever believes in Him; believes that that’s exactly what happened there on the cross of Christ at Easter, is set free from the burden and the consequences of their sin.

If we believe that with our lives, we are free to have a relationship with God. We don’t have to live under the burden of sin anymore, as slaves to sin, with our whole lives missing the point. It’s ground zero – it’s a clean slate – it’s a start again fresh. When we look at the cross of Christ and say, “I believe,” God our Father says, “My child, I forgive you.” When we put our faith in Him the gates of heaven are flung open wide and there’s a wild party. Now you might say, “But Berni, I took that step years ago and look at my life?” And I’d say to you, “Have you taken that step with your life? I mean do you live your life in that reality every day?” Come on, that’s what Easter is! It’s Easter every day because by shedding Jesus blood on the cross; by His sacrifice, you and I have a new life today, tomorrow, the next day, for all of eternity – that’s it!

A Personal Call

You and I are so incredibly precious in God’s eyes. He loves us so much He has given us this freedom to choose Him or reject Him and you know every day we have that choice – in what we think, where we place our trust, what goes on in our hearts, what we do. Jesus died for all of humanity, for you, for me and for billions of other people. That’s a huge thing – He bore all of our sin.
Have you ever done something wrong and you wake up the next day and you realize and the consequences and the pain and the hurt of that. You know, you have hurt someone you love, or whatever it is and you just have to then live through the consequences of that sin. It’s a terrible feeling; you know what I am talking about.

Imagine if you could experience it one time, the consequences of all the mistakes, all the sin you make in the whole of your life, how would that feel? It would be unbearable, wouldn’t it? – It would be unbearable. Now put yourself in Jesus sandals for a minute. He bears the pain, the punishment, the consequences of all the sins of the human race for all time at that one place, on the cross. How Jesus suffered! We just can’t see this as some huge macro act of God in history. It is that but if we restrict it to that we miss the point. Jesus died for the one; He died for you; He died for me, to set us free from the slavery of sin – the slavery of living a life that completely misses the point.

You know the worst bit about slavery? It’s the fear; it’s the lurking knowledge, deep down inside, that we are missing the point with our lives. And at the end of the day, there will be a reckoning. That makes the life of sin a true life of slavery. In Hebrews chapter 2 verse 14, it says this: “Since we are human, of flesh and blood, Jesus too shared in our humanity so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death – that is the devil and free those who, all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. For this reason, He had to be made like His brothers and sisters, in every way, in order that He might pay the price for the sins on the people.

How many people live in fear of dying? I used to, don’t any more, because I know that I believe in Jesus. I know that when I die I will go to be with the Lord my God. Not because I’m a good person but because I believe in Jesus. No more fear, no more lurking sense of a life without purpose; a life that’s missing the whole point. Paul in Galatians chapter 5 verse 1 says, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yolk of slavery.”

You know we can run but we can’t hide. We can pretend like it’s not there but it still is. Sin is a reality – sin means slavery; sin means consequences. We keep on doing those same old, same old things – chasing after money or fame; treading on people; hurting people; whinging about people – whatever it is, it has consequences and it misses the whole point.

I want to ask you again today – have you given your life over to this truth. I mean, day by day, do you walk your walk, think your thoughts, make your choices in the wonderful knowledge of this incredible gift of life? Jesus died for you – Jesus paid the price for you – Jesus here and now, is calling you to be free of the slavery of sin and death. This is not about taking a guilt trip here; it’s about God calling you to Himself through His Son. Do you want that more than anything? Pray this with me right now: Father, I have heard the message of Jesus. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for me and I want to accept Him as my Saviour, the one to set me free from the slavery of sin. Father, I am sorry for the things I have done in the past, I turn away from them now. I want you to fill me up with your Holy Spirit. I want to live my life for you and I want to know your peace and your freedom and your joy and your love. I ask that in Jesus name. Amen.

This is where life is at – not some rule-based, constricting religion. Freedom – freedom from all the things that we are enslaved to that ruin our lives. Freedom from wandering aimlessly through life towards a disastrous end; freedom from the consequences of our sin and into a life with purpose and meaning and joy and wonder – a life that only gets better and better – a life that goes on for all eternity. That’s it – that’s what Easter is all about. That’s what Jesus was doing on that cross, for you and for me. All we need to do is to hear that message and let it sink into our hearts and to hold on to that, deep inside and never, ever let it go. Easter – Jesus – freedom – life.

So many people in our society have this nagging sense of guilt, this deep down sense that they’re not good enough and the reason is that we aren’t.

Let’s Tarry A While

It’s interesting how, when Easter passes by, we kind of quickly forget it and move on. It was a long weekend and it was great to have some time off and have a rest and have a bit of chocolate. It comes, we eat chocolate, we have that long weekend, it goes and that’s it, we move on, it’s back to work or school or an empty house or whatever it is that we do day after day after day but this week on the program I’d like to dwell and tarry, just stay there for a little while longer.

Today’s program is the third message in a series that I’ve called You Are To Die For. It’s a big thing, this Easter thing is a big thing, not as a religious holiday, I don’t mean that, I for one am definitely not into religion it just doesn’t work for me. I’m not talking about religion I’m talking about this big thing that God was up to at Easter, the thing that Jesus went through, the suffering, the persecution, the beating, the rejection and that death on the cross.

Over the last couple of weeks on the program, we’ve been looking at what makes ‘us’ to die for; you and I are so incredibly special to God. He hand crafted us, he made us, he set us free in this amazing universe always loving us but with the freedom, he gave us a free will to accept him or reject him and it comes right down to this, according to God, he made us, he loves us, he gave us free will and the point of all that was for us to know him and have this fantastic relationship with him, here and now and for all eternity, but it doesn’t matter which way we cut it, each one of us in our own way, we’ve rejected him. I know I have, more often than I can even imagine or count or recall and in doing that we miss the whole point, the whole point of creation, the whole point of life, the plan and the desire of God’s heart. When we turned our backs on God and we all have, we missed the whole point of life.

That’s exactly what the Greek word for sin, which is what the Bible uses, means. It means to miss the mark or miss the point. I know when I use the word sin people often write in or call in and they say, “Come on, this is some kind of old fuddy duddy concept, get with it Berni. Get into today, sin just isn’t relevant, it’s something that priests and ministers talked about in the 1950’s, come on – get with it, it’s old fashioned.” And I know, I know that some people think of sin in that way but let’s come back to Easter and the central point, the central problem of all creation is that we rejected God, we turned our backs on him. It’s hard to come to grips with, people say, “Well, I’m not that bad, I’m okay.” But let me ask you, from the moment you were old enough did you put God first? Was God always first in your life? Did you live your life as though you belonged to him? And the answer for all of us is no, we didn’t, we’ve all done things, we’ve all turned away in our way, in different ways, we’ve all turned our backs on God and at that cross at a time that we now call Easter and we celebrate and remember, on that cross God calls us home.

The consequences, what we should have paid for rejecting him, were paid for by his own Son, Jesus. He died to give us a new life. Okay, God calls us to a life of sacrifice, God calls us to a life of giving but a fresh new life, a wholesome real life with real joy and because out of his great love, he reached out to us through Jesus, he opens the door to a real and dynamic and exciting and beautiful and wondrous relationship with God. At the heart of the message of Easter is the fact that Jesus paid the price of my sin, of your sin, of our rejection of God, of our missing the whole point of creation and the fact that Jesus paid the price seems unfair, don’t you think? Let’s have a look, let’s have a read, we’re going to the Bible if you have one grab it, we’re going to open up John, chapter 18, verse 38 and go through the chapter 19, verse 16.

“What is truth?” Pontius Pilate asked, with this he went out again to the Jews and said, “I find no basis for a charge against this Jesus but it’s your custom for me to release to you, one prisoner at the time of the Passover. Do you want me to release the King of the Jews?” And they shouted, “No, not him, give us Barabbas.” Now Barabbas had taken part in a rebellion. Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged, the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head, they clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him again and again and again saying, “Hail the King of the Jews.” And they struck him in the face. Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.” And when Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, “Here is the man.” As soon as the Chief Priests and their officials saw him they shouted, “Crucify, crucify.” But Pilate answered, “You take him and crucify him, as for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.” But the Jews insisted, “We have a law and according to that law he must die because he claimed to be the Son of God.” And when Pilate heard this he was even more afraid and he went back inside the palace. “Where do you come from?” He asked Jesus but Jesus gave him no answer. “Do you refuse to speak to me?” Pilate said, “Don’t you realise I have power either to free you or to crucify you?” and Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.” From then on Pilate tried to have Jesus set free but the Jews kept shouting, “If you let this man go you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.” When Pilate heard this he bought Jesus out and sat down on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement. It was the day of preparation of Passover week, about the sixth hour. “Here is your king.” Pilate said to the Jews but they shouted, “Take him away, take him away and crucify him.” “Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked. “We have no king but Caesar” the chief priests answered. Finally Pilate handed him over to be crucified.

An Innocent Man

A good friend of mine by the name of Paul is a Magistrate. Now the more I get to know him, the more I realise how gifted he is to do that job. I’d hate to have to sit in judgement, ‘this one goes free, this one gets locked up’ and to make it even more difficult, he’s a Magistrate in the children’s court. Now Paul has this really balanced thing happening in his outlook. He weighs this against that in almost everything he does. I was saying to someone else recently that when I look at Paul, what I see is someone that I am really comfortable with being a Magistrate, I’m really glad that this guy is on the bench of the children’s court because he is absolutely the right person to be doing it.

When you look at this story of the crowd and Pontius Pilate and Barabbas and Jesus and an angry, ugly mob, I see some of that in Pilate. He was the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate and Jesus had been talking to him about truth and he says, “What is truth?” And he goes out to the mob and says, “Look, I’ve looked at this man and I find no case against him, this Jesus.” He wasn’t swayed his judgement by the religious leaders who frankly, wanted Jesus dead because Jesus, Jesus was threatening them, Jesus was going to the people and making sense and healing them and caring for them and standing up for them, that’s why the religious leaders wanted him dead, that’s how poison that whole ‘ruled based religion’ thing can become. No, Pilate wasn’t swayed by same things that whipped up that mob and all the way through this scene, over and over again, Pontius Pilate finds Jesus not guilty. In verse 38 he says, “I find no basis for a charge against him.” And again in verse 4 of the next chapter, once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews, “Look, I’m bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.” In verse 6, “You take him and crucify him, as for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.” And then down in verse 12, “From then on Pontius Pilate tried to set Jesus free.”

Here was a man who was fairly objective and he found no guilt in Jesus Christ. Of course there’s a marked difference between my friend Paul and Pontius Pilate in that ultimately, Pilate was a weak man and he gave into the crowd. He never changes his judgement mind you but based on this tradition, he just rolls over because of the angry mob but ultimately he said, ‘look, now look at the life of Jesus, this man who healed people and who reached out to them and who cared for them, who taught them stuff about life that made sense, of course he’s innocent.’ Innocent of everything except the fact that his goodness, his genuineness stood in sharp contrast to the manipulation and deceit of the religious leaders of the day, he threatened their power base and that’s why they wanted him dead.

Now the other player in this game is Barabbas. Now Barabbas is an interesting character, his name literally means, ‘son’ which is what bar means, ‘of the father, Abba.’ Bar-Abba; son of the father Barabbas. Now we will come back to that a little later but he’s a criminal. John tells us there in verse 40 that he’d taken part in a rebellion. If you go to Matthews gospel, chapter 27, verse 16, Matthew calls him a “…notorious criminal” so it was well know that this man was a crook. In Mark, chapter 15, verse 7 and Luke, chapter 23, verse 19, they both tell us that Barabbas committed murder as a part of an insurrection. So here we have it, a well known, notorious criminal and murderer Barabbas, versus Jesus Christ superstar.

This Jesus with rock star status, who healed the lame and the sick and the blind and stood up for the oppressed and the needs of the people against all those religious rules and all that manipulation, he exposed the religious hypocrisy of those leaders. Huge crowds followed him, listened to him, and saw him heal countless people. Those same crowds, just a few days before this on the day that we now call Palm Sunday, when Jesus came into Jerusalem riding on a donkey, they threw down palm leaves and they were shouting his praises, literally calling him the King of the Jews, their messiah, their saviour. Now, just a few days later, whipped up by the religious leaders, manipulated by them again, here they are baying for his blood, “Crucify him.” What a brutal response, no wonder politicians say that the opinion polls are fickle, there’s a great saying, ‘a weeks a long time in politics’, it was true then and it’s true now.

Look at it again, when they’re given a choice they say, ‘we want Barabbas, we want Barabbas’, and of Jesus, ‘crucify him’. When Pilate asked them about Jesus they said, “Crucify him.” And ultimately Pilate went against his own judgement, he was weak, afraid of the crowd, he had Jesus beaten and had him handed over to be crucified, wait for it, instead of Barabbas. They get it; it’s a switch, a substitution that goes on there. Barabbas, the son of the father was the murderer, he should have gone to the cross but instead he was set free and the innocent Jesus was crucified in his place and here’s what God’s saying to us through what happened, ‘Jesus is the Son of God and the son of man.’ “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” God said of Jesus. Jesus was also a man, he often referred to himself as the son of man, he was human, he was God in the flesh, he was perfect, without spot or blemish, ask Pilate, he was innocent; the Son of God, Jesus; the son of the father, the Son of Dad; Barabbas.

God is a loving Dad, there’s a radical concept here introduced by Jesus, the Jews didn’t refer to God as Dad but Jesus called him Abba, Dad and this man, Barabbas; Bar-Abba, son of Dad is the one who gets set free, is the substitution of the innocent for the guilty. Jesus went to the cross for Barabbas, Barabbas deserved but Jesus wore it. Barabbas was the murderer but Jesus was killed. Barabbas was the one who hurt people and Jesus suffered in his place. Barabbas, the son of the father was guilty and he went free, Jesus, the Son of the Father was innocent and he went to the cross and who judged him, not Pilate, Pilate wasn’t the one that sent him to the cross, it was the angry mob, the religious leaders, the very people whom he came to set free, whom he loved, whom he healed, whom he taught. They were the ones that turned against him; they were the ones who crucified Jesus. What does that mean for you and for me?

Who is Barabbas?

Let me ask you a question? Who is Barabbas? There was Pilate, there was Jesus, there was Barabbas, and there was the angry mob. To the angry mob, Barabbas was just that criminal and murderer, it was the Passover festival. The Passover was a celebration of when God was releasing his people out of slavery in Egypt and he sent plagues on Egypt and the final plague was the death of the first born of all Egyptians and God said, “Get a lamb, take it’s blood, smear it on the top of your door and the angel of death will pass over your house, you won’t suffer that death.” And so there was this tradition where the Roman Governor and the Passover festival, all these years later, would release one criminal to the people, Barabbas was the man this year.

Bar Abba, son of the father, one of God’s children. You see, you and I are Barabbas. I said before that attitudes to sin vary enormously in our society, so many people see sin as an outdated concept but the whole point of creation was for us to have a relationship with God and in our free will we rejected him and when we did that we missed the point and that’s sin. It’s conspicuous, you can’t hide that, we’re all guilty of that and the wages of sin is death. God is wondrous and perfect and holy and awesome and a loving God and it’s hard to imagine love and judgement in one person.

My friend Paul, the magistrate, is a fair and compassionate man but he’s also just. I look at him and it gives me some understanding of how those two things fit together in God’s nature and his love, instead of letting you and me pay the price, in his love God sends his Son, Jesus. When we put our faith in him, we’re forgiven. You too are one of the sons and daughters of Abba, Dad, God. We too are loved by him and we too can put our faith in Jesus and believe with our hearts and with our heads that on that first Easter, on that cross, Jesus paid the price of our sin and when we believe in him we have complete forgiveness.

“Finally Pilate handed him over to be crucified so the soldiers took charge of Jesus, carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the skull which is in Aramaic is called Golgotha. Here they crucified him and with him, two others, one on each side and Jesus in the middle and Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened it to the cross, it read Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. The chief priest of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Don’t write ‘The King of the Jews’ but that this man claimed to be the king of the Jews.” And Pilate answered them, “What I have written, I have written.”

When the soldiers crucified Jesus they took his clothes off, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom, “Lets not tear it.” They said to one another, “Lets decide by lot who gets it.” This happened that the Scripture might be fulfilled which said, “They divided my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.” So this is what the soldiers did. Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Dear woman, here is your son.” And to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that time on this disciple took her into his home. Later, knowing that all was completed and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I’m thirsty.” A jar of wine vinegar was there so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of hyssop plant and lifted it to Jesus lips. When he had received a drink Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”

That’s the price, the price that Jesus paid for you and me and as much as we here in the twenty first century might have a cultural problem with the notion of sin, it doesn’t change anything, it doesn’t change God, it doesn’t change who God is, why God created us and the reality that you and I both have fallen short of the glory of God, you and I both have rejected God. So many people in our society have this nagging sense of guilt, this nagging sense of inadequacy, this deep down sense that they’re not good enough and the reason is that we aren’t and God comes to us through the cross of Jesus Christ and cries out to us and says, ‘I love you. You are my Barabbas. You are my child and I love you and I sent my Son Jesus to pay the price. Look at my Son, look at the cross, put your faith in him and you can have eternal life, a new life, a fresh life, a life that begins now.’ When we believe in Jesus we have the forgiveness that Jesus purchased, when we believe the door is flung open to a deep relationship with God, when we believe we have eternal life; you, me and Barabbas.

It’s one thing to believe with our head or our hearts in Jesus and that He rose again but it’s quite another to believe with our lives. To live it out authentically requires change.

A Crazy Morning

Let me paint you a picture. Just the other day someone you love passed away and you really admired and trusted this person. I mean, you’d seen them in operation and now they’re gone. It’s a shock; it shouldn’t have happened; they were so young, so full of potential and promise, they had a future and now that person is gone. It takes time to come with grips with that sort of loss…the shock, the sadness, that deep sense of loss, even anger and we go through all sorts of different stages in that grieving process. You wake up with that dull ache in your head; what’s that about? And then you remember your loss. The phone rings and it’s a friend and they’re ranting and raving and this person who was dead, what are they saying? He’s alive again!!

Now hang on a minute – what sort of crackpot – I mean, what’s going on – is this a sick joke? But your friend’s adamant; he’s alive. Now what, how do you react? I mean, it’s an incredible claim, incredulous, mad! You saw him die, with your own eyes; arrested, crucified, buried and definitely very dead. You know in one sense, it is almost easier to believe if you read it in the Bible. You know it’s something that happened a couple of thousand years ago to Jesus – I mean long enough ago to make it safe. Do you know what I mean? Sure, God could do anything; God did that back then but that was two thousand years ago.

Question – if you believe that Jesus rose from the dead again, let’s just transpose that into today, here and now – Jesus here. You get a phone call tomorrow morning; is it possible? Today we are going to put ourselves back in the shoes of the disciples, right there in that place, Jerusalem. This is the last message in a series of four messages that I’ve called, “You are “To Die For” and the last part of the Easter message is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

What was that about; did it happen and if it did, what does it mean to you and me here and now? Now if we put ourselves back in the shoes of those disciples, right there in that Jerusalem, two thousand years ago, with the Jesus that they knew, it gets a lot harder to believe. It was a bit like that for Mary Magdalene. She went down to the tomb to embalm the body of Jesus and Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept she bent over to look into the tomb and she saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been; one at the head and the other at the foot. And they ask her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They’ve taken Jesus my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put Him.” At this she turned around and she saw Jesus standing there, but she didn‘t realise it was Him. “Woman,” He said, “Why are you crying, who is it you are looking for?” Thinking He was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have put Him and I will go and get Him.” And Jesus said to her, “Mary!” and she turned towards Him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni”, which means ‘teacher’. Jesus said, “Don’t hold onto me for I haven’t yet returned to the Father. Go, instead, to my brothers, the disciples, and tell them I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” And Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news, “I’ve seen the Lord.” She told them He had said these things to her.”

See, it wasn’t only Mary. I mean, I love the fact that, even though Jesus had told them time and time again He would rise from the dead, she looked at Jesus and it’s so incredible, she mistakes Him for the gardener – the Son of God risen from the grave and Mary….., I mean, there’s some humour in that, and Mary looks at Him and thinks He is the gardener – the guy that mows the lawn and does the edges. But she wasn’t the only one – I mean, after that it was Thomas – sometimes we call him doubting Thomas.

Now Thomas was one of the twelve and he wasn‘t with the disciples when Jesus first came to them so the other disciples said to Thomas, “Hey, Tom, we’ve seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Look, come on, unless I see the nail marks in His hands and put my fingers where the nails were and put my hand into His side where they pierced Him, I am not gonna believe this.” Now a week later, Jesus’ disciples were in a house together again, this time Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you,” and then He said to Thomas, “Tom, come on, put your finger here, see my hands, reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe,” and Thomas said to Him, “My Lord and my God.” Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me you have believed and you are blessed but blessed are those who have not yet seen and yet they believe.”

Now, I don’t know, I think I’m with Thomas – this is hard to believe when you are close to it. What do you believe? Maybe it’s an uncomfortable question; maybe it’s easy to consign this whole ‘resurrection of Jesus’ thing to the past. Kind of like a fable that we give some moderate level of intellectual assent to. A kind of vague, half believe insurance policy thing.

But the Apostle Paul takes it very seriously. In Romans chapter 10 verse 9 he says, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” And in First Corinthians chapter 15 verse 17, he says, “If Christ has not been raised then your faith is futile.”

So for Paul the resurrection was not some optional extra – not some distant myth; not something that we can kind of half believe. And we can say ‘I believe’ that Jesus rose from the dead but see what it says here? Paul writes, “If you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” And if you don’t you’re wasting your time. Let me ask you today, simply, what do you believe?

The resurrection can seem completely incongruous amidst the day to day realities of life. I mean, I still do some IT consulting work, it’s my professional background – I still do a little bit even though I am in full time ministry and sometimes I travel into the city and I work up on the thirty eighth floor, looking down all over the city and deal with important people and managers and lawyers and we talk about this, we talk about that – and computers and ….
Now stick the resurrection right in the middle of that day to day reality of life and ask me ‘Berni, in the middle of all this do you actually believe that this Jesus was raised from the dead? I mean it seems incongruous; it’s an outrageous notion; it just doesn’t fit. Come on, Berni, do you still believe this stuff?’ And my answer to you is absolutely! That’s me, what about you? What do you believe? And if Jesus did rise from the dead, so what – today?

Living the Resurrection

Well, if He did rise from the dead, what does that mean to you and me, here and now? What relevance is there in all of that? Can the resurrection of Jesus Christ have an impact on your life and mine today? Now they’re good questions! I mean, why have a resurrection at all? Why did God plan it that way and why did He make it central to believing in Jesus? Just before, we saw how the Apostle Paul said it was essential, that without faith in that, there was no point. “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you’ll be saved and if Christ was not raised then your faith is futile.”

Ok, that’s the theology if you like; take that at face value but why is it so important, why does God put it right at the centre of believing in Jesus? I mean, I’m a pesky bloke, I keep asking these questions because, truthfully, people never really explained this stuff to me when I came to Christ at first, in terms that I could understand. All these Christians were talking about this whole resurrection thing like its really important, well, great, but why? Believing in Jesus for me is a process; it’s a whole life long thing that happens. And at some point, I took a step of faith to believe in Him but what I discovered was, there were lots of different parts of my life that didn’t fit with Him – selfishness and anger and judgmental – and I am a really judgmental person naturally – all stuff that actually stunted my growth.

Its crazy how we want to hold onto that rubbish for dear life but we do and it turns out robbing us of life. You know, I used to spend most of my time being angry with people because they didn’t measure up to my standards. They didn’t see the world the way I did and you know what, that robbed me of life. Instead of peace and joy I was always angry; there was always resentment in my heart – it’s not rocket science. It’s one thing to believe with our head or our hearts in Jesus and that He rose again but it’s quite another to believe with our lives; to do that – to live it out authentically – requires change. And that’s where the resurrection comes in.

Again the Apostle Paul writes in Romans chapter 8, “If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through His Spirit that dwells in you.” Lets unpack that for a minute – you have the crucifixion; the death of Jesus where Jesus paid for all our sins. You know, we turned away from God; we missed the whole point of creation – that’s what sin is. We looked at that last week. But God is loving and just – we’ve all fallen short and so Jesus died for us and when we believe in that, our slate is wiped clean; we’re forgiven; it’s a fresh start.

It’s fantastic, but you and I know that getting rid of that rubbish that God calls sin is a life long process. Come on, we’re all naturally selfish, at least I am. Someone does us wrong somehow and we want anger and revenge and payback time, but Jesus turns around and says, “You want to believe in me with your life? Well show me, go on, go out and love your enemy, in fact pray for them.” I don’t know about you but that way of living just doesn’t come naturally to me. So in the process of changing, we discover that changing those things is really hard, I mean it’s very hard and in fact, is some areas, it’s downright impossible.

I was just talking recently with some friends and I know I’m a very ‘outcome’ oriented person and I expect everyone else to be the same – they’re not! Some people are wonderfully ‘relationship’ oriented much more so than I am. Now those people aren’t ‘outcome’ oriented but we need them too. So what am I going to do? Spend my whole life getting angry with them?

I mean, Paul bemoans this reality in Romans chapter 7, he says, “I can will to do what’s right but I just can’t do it. Who will rescue me from this body of sin and death? Thanks be to God, our Lord Jesus Christ.” The resurrection is learning to live again. “If the Spirit of Him, who raised Jesus from the dead, dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies, also through that same Spirit.”

God wants to bring life back into our bodies; colour into our cheeks. How many people need that in their lives right now and they’re looking in all sorts of strange places? There are people who are broken and hurt inside; there are people who are suffering from low self-esteem; there are people who are addicted to anger, like I was. And we go looking from solutions and the solution is staring us in the face.

It’s not some theory, its actuality! The same Holy Spirit, who breathed life back into Jesus dead body, is the Spirit that wants to give us victory over the sin of our humanity and breathe life back into our bodies. That’s what the resurrection is about, here and now – the Spirit wants to give us victory over our sins. Come on, this is great stuff; this is a great plan. God wants to do that for you and for me, here and now and every moment of every day for the rest of our life here on earth – to keep changing us and setting us free and filling us with fresh, new life; a resurrection life that Jesus bought for us on the cross.

Well, that’s today – what about tomorrow, what about the future, what about the whole eternal life promise?

A Certain Hope for Tomorrow

Have you ever been in a place where you have lost all hope? I mean, hope as it turns out, is a very precious commodity indeed. We all need things in our lives to look forward to; to hope in; the deep sense that I have a future, I know where I am going and when there’s no future, it’s tragic. When you loose all hope it feels like life is over and that’s the problem with death. I mean, we all die at some point; some die young; others watch their bodies progressively give up the ghost. If God is God though; if He loves us the way the Bible says He does, then hope would be very high on His list because the last thing that He’d would want for us, is to experience hopelessness and it turns out that hope is very high on His list. That’s what this whole resurrection thing is about.

It’s a funny thing, but when things are going badly in our lives, isn’t it funny how hope evaporates really quickly? I mean, look at the disciples – over and over again Jesus told them something – He said, “Guys, I’m going to be crucified but I’m going to rise again.” Come on, He told it to them lots of times but when it happened they were fearful and they were devastated and they were scattered to the four winds – they deserted Him and they completely lost sight of His promise; the resurrection – the thing that would give them hope. And actually most of them as we saw before, needed convincing that Jesus had actually risen again.

It’s a bit like us! Life takes a turn for the worse and the first thing to go out the window is hope – it’s kind of natural. First Chronicles in the Old Testament – First Chronicles chapter 29 verse 15, says, “Our days on earth are like a shadow without hope.” And let me get in your face right now for a bit because we need some good teaching on hope. It’s not hope that ‘I hope it rains tomorrow’ or ‘I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow’. I mean the certain hope that faith in Jesus Christ brings.

When we put our trust in Jesus in the good times and we lay down our lives and we love Him and we adore Him and we worship Him and we follow Him with our lives, I tell you what happens – when the storm clouds start to roll in, something strange and new and wonderful happens is our hearts. This light of hope shines and it won’t go out.

Peter the Apostle writes in his first letter, chapter 1 verse 3. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is a beautiful passage – if you have a Bible, grab it and have a look. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, by His great mercy He has given us a new birth into a living hope, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” I love that – “a new birth into a living hope, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead into an inheritance that’s imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for us who are being protected by the power of God through faith, for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this we rejoice, even though now for a little while we have had to suffer various trials.”

That’s an understatement – the people Peter was writing to, these Christians, were being tarred and feathered, burned at the stake, fed to lions and tortured and killed and Peter writes to them and says, “But you know something, when you look at the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have a certain hope for the future.” Over and over again the New Testament talks about Jesus being the ‘first born from among the dead’ – in other words, it points back to the resurrection. Jesus took all of our sin – ‘He, who knew no sin, became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God.’ So He died because of our sin and He rose again. He is the first born; the first one in this resurrection cycle and we put our hope in that because we too, when we believe in Jesus, will have eternal life. One day when my body gives up the ghost; one day I’ll stand before Jesus, for ever and ever.

It’s a historical fact that death couldn’t hold Jesus down and when we put our trust in Him that’s where we put our hope. Our problem is we spend so much of our time hoping for the next pay rise or some temporal bauble here on earth that we loose sight of the living hope that we have through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Let’s do it again, “By His great mercy He has given us a new birth; we are born again into a living hope,” not an uncertain hope, not a hope that’s fleeting and fading but a certain hope; “the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead; an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading.” That is there for you and that is there for me if we put our faith in Jesus and if we are able to say before God in our hearts, ‘I believe He died for me and rose again. It is rock solid.’ And you know the basis of that promise; it’s the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Look at your life at the moment – the things that aren’t going too well for you; the things that you might want to change. The reality is we can’t change some of them – maybe God will change them, maybe He won’t, I don’t know – but in the meantime, He wants us to live life in the certain hope that we have a future; an eternal future and we know that, because we can look at the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He defeated sin on the cross – the wages of sin are death – but Jesus defeated that; He paid for my sin, He paid for your sin, on the cross and He still rose again even though He bore all that sin and that’s what waits for us.

That doesn’t compare to anything you and I can have on earth here – it just doesn’t compare. That certain hope of eternal life with Jesus far outweighs and eclipses anything we could have here and now. John writes in the Book of Revelation, in chapter 21 – he gives us a glimpse; it’s like a little crack opens in heaven and he is able to see inside and he says, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth because the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and there was no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men and He will live with them and they will be His people and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, there’ll be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old things have passed away.”

Nothing comes anywhere close to that. We wander round down here in the weeds and in the murky mire and we try and get hope and satisfaction out of all sorts of things that are going to pass away. What things on this earth will you and I be able to take with us when we breathe our last? Come on! That’s why God wants us to put our faith in Him – the resurrection of Jesus Christ is God’s call to set our eyes and our hearts and everything we are and all our hope, on heavenly things because of the resurrection of Jesus.

Paul writes in Colossians chapter 3 verse 1, “If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Jesus is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind of the things that are above not on the things that are on earth because you have died to them.”

It’s time to start living life from an eternal perspective! When the resurrection of Jesus Christ is central to what we believe in our hearts, two things change – firstly the Holy Spirit starts taking away the rubbish that God calls sin and giving us life here and now – vibrant and abundant life. And secondly, no matter what happens; no matter how sick we get or how poor we get, we know that one day we will stand in glory, before Jesus Christ. Halleluiah!